Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Je suis Charlie

As a modest token of solidarity with the victims of today's sickening violence, we would like to share the work of one of their eighteenth-century forebears. This anonymous satirist chronicled the deportation of Parisian women of ill repute to Louisiana c.1719-1720, poking a bit of fun at their lovers and at the apothecaries and surgeons who made a brisk business treating their, uhm, social diseases. On another day we would be inclined to deconstruct the image and its various captions, but today that's not the point. Long live humour and freedom of expression.
﻿﻿